


Now the serpent was more cunning

by bookoftheazuresky



Category: Granblue Fantasy (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Helel appearing as himself, Identity Reveal, M/M, Post-What Makes the Sky Blue III: 000 (Granblue Fantasy), otherworlder!Belial
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-21
Updated: 2019-05-21
Packaged: 2020-03-08 23:40:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18905008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookoftheazuresky/pseuds/bookoftheazuresky
Summary: No matter how well-guarded the garden, the snake always gets in.





	Now the serpent was more cunning

**Author's Note:**

> Don't get me wrong, I don't think this is where cygames is actually headed with Belial, but it sure is a concept.

The passage through the rift was an assault to anything with physical or magical senses, worsened by the fragments of the tower that were also drawn to its pull. Lucilius had been forced to pull his new wings in or risk worse injury by the debris. Gritting his teeth, he protected his face with his arms and endured.

Then, of course, Belial wrapped his arms around Lucilius, shielding him like he was still small and fragile. Lucilius had to resist the urge, even now, to slap the stupid primal: trapped in whatever hole the Speaker wanted to put Lucilius in was _not_ the most efficient use of Belial’s resources.

Lucilius could feel it in his bones when the rift transport was done and they were freefalling through space once again. Belial spread a single pair of wings to slow their descent, grunting in pain as he took Lucilius’ weight in a hard landing. Shards of stone and other materials crashed in a rain around them outside the shelter of Belial’s mantled wings.

“Damn, what a ride,” Belial chuckled after a long minute, when the fall of debris had subsided somewhat. He shifted to look around, fanning his wings in a sharp motion to throw off the dust and rubble that had collected on their scaled surfaces. The marks of Avatar’s power were still written clearly on his form- at least, for all his personality flaws, Belial was still a lovely example of first-generation primal engineering and able to bear that raw force without losing his core protocols.

“Put me down _now_ ,” Lucilius ordered. Belial sighed theatrically at the demand, but complied.

There was a starry sky above them, but it was no sky ever seen by skydweller or Astral. To the eye it was a massive spiral galaxy cluster if seen rippling water, spangles of light speckling shifting and colorful dust clouds. It was a strange and hauntingly beautiful vista that cast a soft-edged and almost opalescent light down on the rogue Astral and his primal companion.

It was also deeply concerning, because Lucilius’ preferred area of study was never alternate dimensional physics. The field was abstruse even to Astral sorcerers, of practical use only in the construction of wards and barriers. While Lucilius was knowledgeable even by the standards of Astral scholars, he by no means held the sum total of wisdom of his kind. (He banished a thread of memory in not-Lucifer’s voice as irrelevant.)

He clicked his tongue and told Belial, “You could have been useful and stayed, but you had to make yourself my problem again.”

“I love being your problem,” Belial said, neither chastised nor daunted. “But don’t get too concerned, Cilius, I’ve still got tricks-“ He froze, eyes widening, wings going tense.

Something _rang_ , the tone of a bell so precisely pure that falseness fled it. A dispel of the highest level, one that Lucilius didn’t think _he_ could cast without supplies and a diagram and a ten-minute incantation. The void-forged armor that coated his upper body lost cohesion under it, dripping off of his skin like cold, half-clotted blood.

But Belial _cracked_ under it, losing focus like a badly cast illusion until his form scattered like shards of glass and smoke and in his place was-

A serpent formed of the distortion between worlds, with scales of lead and brass and flesh striated with evil violet flame. Its back was a nest of clawed wings, its fangs as long as Lucilius’ fingers with an ichor-like sheen that promised poison. Its five eyes had the same malicious luminosity as the cracks in its body, and a cruel intelligence that was horrifyingly familiar.

Quicker than thought, it threw coils about Lucilius, binding him in place with its body and drawing tight. Lucilius, bled dry, could only dig gauntleted fingers into the unyielding scales and be grateful he’d withdrawn his wings to protect them already. The crushing embrace he anticipated never came, though- it seemed content to merely hold him pinioned and actually had most of its attention on where the Speaker- because who else- must be.

The Speaker spat something- a name, perhaps, though Lucilius was no linguist to pull meaning from words he’d never heard before. “I might have known. You evaded my gaze for quite some time.”

It flexed its jaws, a long, forked tongue caressing the air in a ripple of laughter. _Nice to know my skills are appreciated._

“Where is Belial?” Lucilius growled, pulling its attention back to him. His magical sense was less dazzled now, and some deep instinct told him that this thing had more in common with the space that they were in now than the realm of the Astrals or the skies he had just come from.

 _Awww, Cilius, I’ve been here the whole time,_ the creature purred, lowering its head until its eyes were only a bit above his. He could see the mottling of the lead-like material of its scales, the elaborate, delicate detailing on the brassy patches interspersed over its hide, the narrow slits of pupils in its glossy, iris-less eyes. 

“It is an emissary from the abyss of death, the Otherworld,” the Speaker said, voice carrying effortlessly to his ears. “Your creation died long ago, and the serpent took his place. He would have been quite young, I imagine, young enough that a certain…difference went unnoticed.”

“I would have noticed!” Lucilius barked. “I wrote Belial into existence, I studied every piece of him! It’s not possible.”

The Speaker was silent. The quiet sounded terribly like pity.

 _You know, a person generally likes to confess himself. Not that a doll like you would know._ Its voice sounded horribly like Belial’s, with an echoing and sibilant undertone that wavered like light through a magical barrier.

“Silence, serpent. Return to the realm from whence you came or I will erase you.” The Speaker’s breathy voice, higher than Lucifer’s, had a note of adamant in it that it had not possessed when speaking with Lucilius.

 _Easily enough done. But I’ll have my spoils. Cilius is mine._ Coils tightened about Lucilius until his bones creaked. He wheezed, wishing for the strength that had flowed so temporarily through his veins.

“No. No child of the skies or the stars may you have. They are not for you to take.” Light moved at the edge of Lucilius’ vision. Despite knowing better, the Speaker looked more like Lucifer to him than anything else.

 _See, now, I don’t think you can do anything to stop me from doing as I please with him. After all, he gave himself to me body and soul._ The snake lowered its head until its flickering tongue kissed Lucilius’ forehead. _Forbidden knowledge is my dominion, after all, and he pursued that far past the bounds of you and your master’s divine providence._

“At your instigation.”

 _Well, yes and no,_  the serpent said, amused.  _You do like to believe the best of him, don’t you? I played a part, certainly. But can you really say it was me, if he chose every step? And let’s not forget_ your _part, and Lucifer’s. It’s so very easy to say I was at fault, but you and I both know that it’s not ‘true.’ And aren’t you so very interested in truth, Speaker?_  

 _And while you watched from your high tower, I loved him just as he was._ The creature sounded so _smug_.

It caressed his cheek delicately with its tongue, tasting him. _My dearest Cilius. Didn’t I give you everything you wanted? Assist you with all of your plans, your plots? I paved your road all the way to the divine tower. And there’s a whole other horizon beyond this. I think you’ll find the Otherworld quite to your tastes, my love._ The scales were starting to waver around the edges, Lucilius’ overwhelmed magical senses picking up the threads of a harmonic that would cut through this extradimensional space. He wondered why the Speaker hadn’t _attacked_ already, then realized that he was right in the middle of the serpent’s body, weakened and all too vulnerable to any strike with enough power to injure the metallic-sheened scales.

This...this _thing!_ Revulsion curdled in the back of Lucilius’ throat. To think that it had been _toying_ with him for all those years, using his creation’s face and form, professing to _love_ him! He had thought that confronting the Speaker was nauseating. This was worse. He’d- he’d _trusted_ Belial.

 _Cilius?_ the serpent asked solicitously.

“You stupid automata, _hit it already_!” Lucilius roared.

For a split second, he thought the Speaker might not listen, but then dawnlight seared his skin with burning agony. The serpent shrieked, high and then _higher_ and then Lucilius’ eardrums burst and the sound mercifully cut off. The scales around him abruptly turned to flame and glass and then phased through him entirely.

Space folded, distorted, in a way that made Lucilius and his star-bound Astral senses reel. The incandescent form of the Speaker threw up a hand to stem the encroachment of the wrongness into this space and the serpent rippled its wings and slithered into the rift almost too swiftly to track.

 _Just you wait_ , it hissed as it went, the words etched clearly into Lucilius’ mind despite the ringing silence in his skull. _I’ll have him eventually, Speaker. He’s mine for all eternity, you can’t keep him from me forever!_

Lucilius shuddered.

The Speaker wove a swift pattern with his hands and sealed the breached door with a swift clap. Luminosity fading, Lucilius could see his lips were thinned pensively as he looked at the spot where the rift had been. He shook his head, mouth shaping some unheard phrase, then turned back to Lucilius. The look of concern on his face was so Lucifer that Lucilius wanted to slap him.

He refrained, mostly because he couldn’t move. It had been no more than two hours since his awakening at the top of Pandemonium, and the debt of his resurrection and his fight with the spare was coming due. The Speaker hefted him with effortless and irritating strength, and Lucilius focused his meager remaining pride on not leaning into that shoulder.

He didn’t have anything else left, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> For the curious, otherworlder!Belial looks something like Samael from Shin Megami Tensei, though obviously colored more in line with the Otherworlders we see in GBF.


End file.
